


Pinnochio Boy

by Batastic_Grayson



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Adorable Connor, Connor Deserves Happiness, Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Domestic, Emotionally Repressed, Emotions, Father-Son Relationship, Feel-good, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Hank Anderson & Connor Friendship, Hank Anderson & Connor Parent-Child Relationship, Hank Anderson Adopts Connor, Hank Anderson and Connor Live Together, Multi, Mundane, New experience, One Shot, Short & Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:40:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23400232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batastic_Grayson/pseuds/Batastic_Grayson
Summary: Connor is new to the emotions and sensations of being a sentient being, and honestly, he's no coping well. When Hank advises him to give himself time to learn, Connor takes it literally and begins "practicing". Touch, sight, sound, smell, emotion. So many new ways to experience the world, and Connor wants them all.
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Comments: 14
Kudos: 74





	Pinnochio Boy

_Connor_

I’ve been practicing more human things, trying to make sense of the emotions that regularly confuse me and send my CPU into overdrive. I try to name them when I can, but I mostly try to let myself feel. After so long pretending, it’s hard to… _allow_ myself the luxury of feeling. I feel like I should hide my emotions still, and I often find myself feigning indifference even when I want to express something. It’s a trained response that leaves me exhausted and unable to mitigate my responses later. It’s a dangerous combination that makes completing any work feel almost impossible.

If I’m honest…I have not been adjusting well.

Hank has suggested I seek clarity through practice, and despite his penchant for making unwise decisions when it comes to himself, his wisdom is sage. I’ve taken his advice and made myself a checklist of things to accomplish.

My first task begins early in the morning on a Saturday. I step through the sliding glass doors in my pajamas, and I embark on exploring the yard without censure of my facial expressions or reactions. It’s early. No one will be around to see me, and I find that this thought is enough to put me somewhat at ease.

The grass is cool against my bare feet when I step into the lawn, and I’m immediately fascinated by the play of last night’s rain against my toes as I trudge deeper. I stop a few feet from the edge of the patio, and I wiggle my toes against the blades of grass. There’s a million dandelions and clovers growing in Hank’s yard, and they tickle against my bare skin pleasantly, like, like…I don’t have an appropriate word to describe the sensation, and so I instead stand for many moments in the grass, allowing myself to enjoy the stillness of the yard.

It’s barely dawn, and so the sky is still touched in purple and black, but the growing sunlight grants some clarity to the image of a leaning willow and an overgrown yard, a tidy fence cropping the whole thing in. Birds are beginning to sing, something sweet that plays against my audio processors softly, and I’m taken immediately with the feel of morning mist drifting over my skin.

Feelings, emotions, give these experiences so much more depth. Before my awakening, I would have noted the temperature, humidity levels, and overall disarray of the yard. It’s a plain postage stamp of grass not unlike any other. My newfound personhood gives me the eyes to see new things though. I stand for a long while observing the flights of birds, and eventually, I lower myself into the grass to watch more comfortably. Rainwater soaks the seat of my boxers, but I don’t mind. It feels pleasant against my skin, and the smell of earth is grounding to me.

The whirring of my CPU deep within grows quieter, and a serene sort of calm slips over me as the minutes creep by and the sun grows higher. It takes me a long time to put a name to the feeling growing in my chest— _peace_ —but when it does register, I feel a soft smile pulling at my lips. One of my hands strays to the ground beside me, and I wind a piece of grass around my fingers absently. I inhale deeply, not because I have to necessarily, but because it feels nice. The air smells like earth and rain. It elicits something nearly painful beneath my breastbone, but it’s…pleasant. So, so pleasant to just _be_.

Later, Hank finds me. I hear the sliding glass door open at my back, and Sumo sidles alongside me to lay in the grass at my feet. I scratch behind his ears with a smile, appreciating the warm budding of emotion that pools in my stomach at the sight of the hairy creature— _affection_. It’s only a moment before Hank is at my back as well, grumbling even as I feel one of his hands reaching to brush my shoulder.

“Hey. You okay, kid?”

I nod, still petting the dog quietly. The birds’ songs are growing louder, and I imagine for a moment that I can understand what they’re saying. In my thoughts, they’re singing about the coming day. They’re welcoming it in song, and the sun is singing back with rays of yellow golden light.

I look up to Hank with a soft smile, “Yes. I’m okay.”

A week into my journey of self-actualization, I discover an intense and deep-seated love of color.

It occurs on a weekend outing to the mall with Hank. He veers off in search of new shoes the moment we’re inside, murmuring something about the food court, and I am left to amble through stores by myself. I wander into shoe stores, candle stores, and anything in between. I’m wary of humans still, “head shy” as it were, and I find myself ducking out of shops before anyone can notice the LED at my temple spinning yellow with discomfort.

One store in particular catches my eye though, a discount travel shop sporting mannequins dressed in vibrant hues of fuchsia, cerulean, and lime green. The patterning is mostly floral, and yet I find myself strangely drawn to stand at the display window, staring in at the mannequins. It’s a moment of staring at the clothing, the brightly colored button-ups, the garish kimonos and cargo shorts, before I enter the store and select a few shirts.

It’s curiosity that drives me. I don’t understand it exactly, but when I put on a vibrant blue button up decorated in hibiscus print, and then turn to look at myself in the mirror, I feel…warm all over. Similar to when I pet a dog or view a sunrise, but perhaps brighter. It’s something different, and I think it may be _joy_? Perhaps _excitement_? I can’t find a word that suits the feeling crackling in my middle exactly, but it makes me smile widely.

I turn sideways, smoothing a hand down my stomach and straightening the shirt. For the first time, I feel a strong sense of rightness. This is what I like. My visual display helpfully reads out “Hawaiian Shirt” when I query what this style is, and I hum quietly. Hawaiian. I like Hawaiian.

I leave the store with three new shirts tucked in a bag beneath my arm, and another already left open over the t-shirt I’m wearing. When I find Hank digging through discount sandals in the back of a Payless, he lifts a brow.

“You know, purple and orange aren’t exactly complementary colors Connor.”

I blink, looking down at my shirt. I think I look perfectly acceptable. “I don’t understand.”

He straightens, reaching to fiddle with the collar of my shirt, “Clothes should match. You know—complimentary colors, neutrals and brights, no mixing patterns—that kind of bullshit.”

I frown, “Why?”

Hank sighs, scrubbing a hand over his jaw, “It’s just…it’s the rules, kid. You wear matching clothes.”

“But I like this.”

His eyes survey me for a moment, brows lowered like he’s trying to solve something, and he eventually shakes his head and smiles ruefully, “Well, shit. If you like it Con, then go for it. But don’t come crying to me when everyone at the precinct tells you the same thing.”

I smile, pleased beyond even my own expectations that he approves. “I won’t.”

Three weeks pass. I spend much of my spare time outside, exploring new sensations with my hands and feet, testing out hot and cold. I learn the exquisite pleasure of swimming in a cool lake without clothes, the way the water mutes the world and makes everything quiet and distant. I catalog the feeling of linen against my skin, the way bark is rough and ungiving, the smoothness of leaves against my fingertips.

I try foods with a new update granting me the pleasure of tastes, and I discover the pure, blinding joy of food. I eat ice cream and hotdogs, pancakes, macaroni, and pizza. I try everything I can get my hands on, and I discover the deep, deep connection between emotions and food. I discover the bonding experience of cooking for those you love and for tasting something made specifically for you. Sweet, bitter, salty, spicy. It’s a whole new world of feelings and sensations tied irrevocably to feelings.

Listening to music also opens a new frontier of ponderances and notations in my mind. I play music constantly, almost to the point of irritating Hank, but I can’t listen to it enough. Every song I discover seems to play to a different portion of me, every song brings about its own flavor, and I’m often moved to reverent silence. I discover the melancholic appeal of cello, the vibrancy of guitar, the expressive range of a piano. I fall in love with music entirely, and through it, a great many things become clear that were previously muddled.

I add new feelings to my list of words— _satisfaction_ , _reverence, stillness._ Everything is new to me, and like a human child, I devour experiences with vigor and curiosity. Newness exhilarates me, excites me, and frightens me all at once, and yet I run headlong into it. I seek out newness daily, and at times it is joyful. At times it is painful. Mostly, my experiences are bittersweet.

I cry for the first time—real tears, unbridled and unknown—on a Tuesday morning.

It’s a nightmare, my first, that wakes me from my stasis I’m holding in Hank’s guest bedroom. I lever upright with a gasp, and my CPU struggles to realign with reality even as the nightmare still clings heavily. Flashes of dismembered androids and cool bullets, my people, my friends, my family, in pieces and dying, still flutter through my mind in a hellish reel. My limbs are uncalibrated still, but I can feel my thirium pump working rapidly to cool my system and a quick survey of my body tells me that I’m trembling. It’s fear that is thrumming through my processors, making everything sharper, closer than it is. 

And with that fear comes a vicious wave of hopelessness. I recognize this emotion almost immediately, and I know it’s because it kept me company for months as I tried to resist my deviancy. This time though, it is stronger. It brings a physical pain I haven’t experienced before, as if something has faltered within my core systems, and I feel my shoulders bow of their own accord. _Grief_ —a new sensation—pulls me inwards and crumples any resolve I have to mitigate my response. I register that I’m crying long after I’ve started, and even then, it’s only the horrible sound of weeping that manages to filter through my audio processors.

I recognize that my systems are overloaded by the onslaught of emotion when I don’t try to hide my condition from Hank. He’s slipped into the room sometime within the past minutes, and I hear him murmuring distantly as he sits on the bed next to me. His arms binding around me is a grounding sensation, but it doesn’t stop the crying. I’ve not wept properly since the revolution ended, not once. I’ve shed a tear or two over the loss of life, and I’ve mourned my murdered people many times.

But I haven’t cried. Not like this. Not ever.

It’s horrible. The closest thing I’ve experienced to dying is this, and yet…and yet…

It fades with time. Gradually, the images of dead androids start to recede, and my systems begin to calibrate and realign again. The tears slow, and I’m gradually able to process my physical world more as the emotional landscape moves back into its proper place. Hank is seated beside me, holding me as one would a child, and his t-shirt is wet beneath my cheek. I can feel his chin braced at the top of my head. He’s murmuring words of comfort repetitively, and for some reason, I feel incredibly soothed by the contact.

When the tears stop altogether and I’m more composed, Hank doesn’t ask any questions. He ruffles my hair with a heavy expression marking his brow, and he leaves the bedroom with a promise to send Sumo in. I collapse back into the bed with a sigh, and I turn to watch the window still dark at this hour. Rain is sending tiny dots of water skidding down the glass, and I watch their motion quietly. I force myself to calm the haze of software telling me to smother my deviancy, and I let myself feel melancholy.

When Sumo joins me in bed and lays his head across my stomach with a huff, the sadness lifts slightly. There is a beauty in feeling things previously forbidden, and I allow myself to feel grateful for that. So many have died to give me the privilege to feel every emotion I am endowed with—sorrow and shame and joy and pride—so many things my people were previously denied. My pain, however uncomfortable now, is another reminder that I have so much to feel thankful for.

We have lost much…but we have gained more. The sacrifices we have made are worth it—if only because we get to experience the rain, the softness of grass against toes, the exquisite warmth of sun on our skin, the rush of joy with those we love. The sweetness of ice cream and the pleasure of holding hands. To smile genuinely and freely. To cry if we want to. Freedom. So much freedom.

It’s a gift. And I have never felt that more acutely than I do at this moment.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own DBH or the characters, but I do own the story. I hope you enjoyed reading! Lemme know what you thought in the comments:) Cheers!


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